v^otory, ^ (^i% coarse, ^^t^ve/ve'ct \^^' '^^^ 
oooa/^i.ov. of *r>/^ We^*Ci^VvAAM'pVfeOs;<A' Xvuj/ 






RATIONAL TRIUMPH: OR THE DANGERS OF VICTORY. 



A 



DISCOURSE 



DELIVERED IN THE 



®oiu0i'e9ati0Mal ^buicli 



OF THE TOWN OP 



SHREWSBURY, MASSACHUSETTS, 



IPO.N THE OCCASIO.V OF THE 



Feieral Triuinplis over the Victories of February, 1862, 



.VXD I\ VIEW OF 



ULTIMATE VICTORY 



Rev. WILLIAM A. McGINLEY. 



WORCESTER: 
PRINTED BY EDWARD R. FISKE, 

FR.VXKHX OFFICE, FOSTER STREET. 

1862. 




RATIONAL TRIUMPH; OR THE DANGERS OF VICTORY. 



DISCOURSE 



DELIVERED IN THE 






OF THE TOWN OP 



SHREWSBURY, MASSACHUSETTS, 



UPON THE OCCASION OF THE 



Federal Triumphs over the Victories of February, 1862, 



AND IN VIEW OF 



ULTIMATE VICTORY 



BY 

Rev. WILLIAM A. McGINLEY. 



WORCESTER: 
PRINTED BY EDWARD R. FISKE, 

FRANKLIN OFFICE, POSTER STREET. 

1862. 






yiyftyr i,Ti pro 

West. Bes. Hist. 800. 



Rev. WxM. A. McGixley, 

Dear Sir: — Feeling the importance of a proper adjustment of our 
present National difficulties, and believing that the Discour^^e delivered bv 
you in the afternoon of last Sablsath, will tend to produce a healthful 
atmosphere, and the dissemination and growth of those principles which 
if carried out, will prove essential to the peace and prosperity of this 
Republic, we respectfully solicit a copy of the same, for publication and 
general distribution. 

Yours, &c. 

THOMAS W. WARD, 
LEANDER FALES, 
LUCIUS S. ALLEN, 
HENRY E. WARREN, 
THOMAS RICE, 
C. 0. GREEN, 

JOSEPH HASTINGS. 
Shrewsbury, February 24, 1862. 



Shrewsbury, March 10, LSG2. 
Gentlemen' : 

I thank you for the kind expression of your favorable opinion of the 
Discourse referred to. Relying upon your judgment, I herewith place the 
Discourse at your disposal, fearing it will not, yet hoping it may, promote, 
so far as our townsmen are concerned, the desirable objects to which you 
refer. 

With high regard, 

Your obedient servant, 

W. A. McGINLEY. 
Thomas W. Ward, Esq., Lucius S. Allex, Esq., and others. 



^Htional Qtriuniplt: or the ^ganutrj) of iirtorg. 



I. Samuel, 4 : 6. 
"what meaneth the noise of this great shout?" 

This passage has not been chosen for discussion in 
the connection in which it stands, but as serving sig- 
nificantly to introduce the tojDic to be considered, 
while a decent regard is paid to the ancient and 
important custom of founding pulpit discourse upon 
scriptural texts. It is the anxious question of men 
jealous for the honor and safety of Philistia and her 
children, excited by hearing a triumphant shout in 
the camp of their enemies. The shout which aroused 
their fears was the birth of ignorance and supersti- 
tion, and boded evil only to those who made it. It 
was the Hebrew welcome to the Ark of God, instead 
of God himself as their deliverer. It was a shout 
which speedily died away into the wail of lamenta- 
tion, as in their slaughter and defeat the honor of 
the Supreme Ruler was vindicated ; God declaring by 
a field strown with thirty thousand dead, and the sacred 
Ark itself borne in triumph to an enemy's land, that 
homage paid to no object, however sacred and august 
rendered by present worth or past history, would com- 
pensate for heart allegiance to Him and practical loy- 
alty to virtue. As listened these barbarians to tri- 



umphant acclamations in the camp of an enemy, as 
anxiously they enquired, " What meaneth the noise 
of this great shout?" So listen and inquire, thous- 
ands of earnest, thoughtful minds, loyal to their coun- 
try and to God, as they hear the shout which goes 
up from the camp and country of their friends. 

But rarely in our history has the shout of exultant 
joy risen from our loyal country with more of enthu- 
siastic heartiness than upon the announcement of the 
recent Federal victories. Private griefs have been for- 
gotten in public joy. Public officers have congratu- 
lated the people, and the people one another. The 
tongues of steeples which have been silent for years, 
save to call the peaceful citizens to the house of 
prayer, to speak the stirring tones of alarm, or the 
sad ones of mourning, have startled us with the vic- 
tor's voice. Cannon, whose thunders have for many 
years spoken only of the glory of the half- forgotten 
dead, now proclaim the triumphs of the living genera- 
tion. Telegraphs have been electric with the joy of 
one section hastening to swell that of another. Eyes 
of tender women and of strong men have alike been 
suffused with tears of joy. The swells of the prairie, 
the ridges of the Alleghanies, and the hills of New 
England, have echoed back the shout of twenty States. 
As the sounds die away over the broad ocean, to wake 
and echo again over the bogs of Ireland, the plains of 
Hungary, and the mountains of Italy, there are thous- 
ands who ask with solemn emphasis, not as partizans, but 
as men standing in the presence of Him in whose likeness 
they were made, looking to the unborn generations whose 
destiny they aid to decide, " What meaneth the noise of 
this great shout?" And now, since we have been 



relieved by a burst of enthusiasm, and we are assembled 
upon a day and in a house pre-eminently designed to con- 
trol the ebullitions of feeling and make them subservient 
to the establishment and growth of solid principles, let us 
enquire as those who know that individual happiness and 
true national prosperity are secured alone by adherence to 
God and His truth, — as those who believe that Govern- 
ments are ordained of God, as an instrumentality for the 
protection, education, and development of men, — as 
Christian men who feel the responsibility which God has 
placed upon us as active agents in shaping the character 
and influence of that under which we live, — as those 
who love their country and their countrymen, who are 
jealous of the honor of the one and sympathetic with the 
sorrows of the other, as mindful of their own prosperity 
and careful of their children's inheritance, — uninfluenced 

by any consideration but a desire to know the truth, 

let us ask the question which rises to our lips, to gain, if 
not a direct and satisfactory answer, at least such as we 
may : What meaneth the noise of this great shout ? 

I. There is but a single response which can he given 
with absolute certainty. 

We know it means one thing ; all else is speculation. 
It means that there are some additional spots of earth 
fertilized by human blood. It means that other " stricken 
fields" have been made, where the plowman of future 
years shall rout with the coulter's point, from their 
shallow graves, the skulls and bones of the fathers, 
husbands, brothers, and lovers of yesterday ; and 
grandsires will tell, to listening ears, tales of the 
"famous victories." It means that the light and joy 
have gone out from hundreds of homes and thousands of 



8 

hearts, and darkness and sorrow have entered in. It 
means that God's moral universe has been shocked with 
the spectacle of new battles and carnage among a fallen 
race, for whose restoration God's Son died. We may 
answer that it certainly means this. The quality, the 
significance, the morale of the shout, is in the main pro- 
blematical, and in default of certainty we are driven to 
vary somewhat the form of our question, and ask — 

II. What may it mean 1 

It may mean nothing more than the conqueror's shout 
has always meant. Ever since men fought, they have 
exulted in victory. Processions and triumphs are the 
trappings of history. Every nation has sought, in forms 
of stone or brass, to perpetuate to future ages her jubilant 
utterances. Obelisks raise their heads above the desert, 
seeming to defy the very elements and ages to hush the 
exultant shouts of the forgotten nations which slumber 
beneath the drifting sands. The arch of Titus still stands 
to tell of Rome's joy over fallen Jerusalem. And under 
various names and forms, nations of more modern times 
have done the same. It has been of little importance what 
has been the cause, or the principles involved, or whether 
any. True, here and there stands a monument planted 
by man in his higher moods, which mark the progress of 
the race ; but all around are hosts of others, as grand 
and grander, which tell of nothing higher than human 
folly and ferocity. A victory has always been a victory. 
National pride, patriotism, and prejudice have and always 
will find in them occasions of triumph. They will inspire 
the poet, the orator, and the populace, though they have 
been for the establishment of despotic power, and for 
principles subversive of the most sacred rights. The 



great shout we hear may mean nothing; more than this. 
Its component parts may be national pride, sectional preju- 
dice, kindred sympathy, and warlike feeling. Joy that 
our enemies have been defeated, — that the boasting 
Southron, who has scouted at Northern valor, has been 
stricken by it. It may be a shout no grander in its char- 
acter than that which greets the plundering Arab on his 
return with booty to his camp ; or that which of yore 
greeted the Highlander, as he hied him homeward from a 
successful foray against a hated clan ; or the Indian, as 
he returns to his village with scalps of a hostile tribe 
dangling at his belt. It may be but the expression of 
selfish, savage human nature. The social impulses which 
lead forth men's active sympathies in behalf of kindred, 
neighborhood, and nation, are valuable as constituting the 
foundation upon which the higher social and moral fabric 
is built ; but upon the development of the intellectual 
and moral nature, are to be subordinated to them. The 
degradation of man is in his voluntary subjection of that 
higher part of his nature which allies him to Grod, to his 
lower nature which allies him to the animal creation. 
Yielding to that animal nature, men have strong sympa- 
thies with the most debasing conflicts. The crowd around 
the cock-pit exult as wildly over the varied fortunes of 
the combat, as at the spectacle of national conflict. In 
the casual canine conflicts of the streets, men choose sides, 
and feel a keen sympathy with the yelp of a defeated cur, 
or the growl of his victorious antagonist. When the con- 
flict is waged by the animal which has welcomed him 
home with kindly wag, and is the playmate of his chil- 
dren, he thrills with every struggle and exults with every 
advantage gained, and is rarely so just as to act upon the 
merits of the fight. When our brothers, neighbors, and 



10 

countrymen are engaged in battle, these instinctive, invol- 
untary feelings of sympathy are apt to control all other 
and higher ones, and a shout will go up at their triumph, 
whether they are in the right or wrong, which springs 
from no source honorable to us as men, whom God holds 
responsible by the bond of the image we bear, 'to applaud 
the right and condemn the wrong. The shout may mean 
nothing more than this, — only the outburst of instinctive 
feelings found alike among all men. We hope it is more. 
We trust even in the aggregate it is more. We know 
that with thousands it is more. But let us remember 
that these principles are as adequate to account for the 
acclamations of this time, as of any gone by. These 
considerations suggest a change of the question to a form 
which admits of a more definite answer, viz. : 

III. What ought it to mean ? 

1. In general, it ought to indicate the intelligent joy of 
moral beings over events which promise to aid the advance 
of God's truth among men. 

Inasmuch as it does not, it is meaningless for good. 
Inasmuch as it is the expression of irrational feeling, 
stimulated by prejudice and passion, it is the harbinger of 
evil. War, considered as war, is an unmitigated curse. 
It is a state of things constituting the very antithiton, 
of heaven. It stands the most complete exponent of 
man's moral degradation. The glory of war in itself is 
the glory of man's brutal nature, and the measure of his 
fall from the image of God. Wars — whatever be their 
pretence — which have their origin in national hatred, 
lust of power, rivalry for glory, tend only to ruin. And 
whatever halo eloquence and song may have thrown 



11 

around warlike achievements, irrespective of the truth 
involved, Cowper's estimate is strictly true : 

" War followed for revenge, or to supplant 
The envied tenants of some happier spot, 

■K- * * * -x- 

Binds all his faculties, forbids all growth 
Of wisdom, proves a school in which he learns 
Sly circumvention, unrelenting hate. 
Mean self-attachment, and scarce aught beside." 

Yet, notwithstanding this intrinsically evil nature of 
war, in man's fallen state it is often the just condition 
of national existence, and the stern, but righteous means 
of the highest social good. It is sometimes the sword 
with which God smites to earth oppression and wrong, and 
makes way for the march of truth. War is justified and 
dignified only by the truth in defence of which it is 
waged. It is useful only when it defends and renders 
sacred principles. The shout, therefore, which goes up 
for a victory, whatever natural feelings of triumph may 
of necessity mingle with and stimulate it, should always 
primarily express the joy of moral beings, that it has made 
some real or possible advance for the truth of God. Apart 
from this, there is nothing in a battle for which it be- 
cometh men to shout. Apart from this, there is little save 
sorrow, suffering, and degradation. Nothing but the 
triumph of man's savage nature for which to shout. The 
shout which means nothing more than joy in the material 
aggrandizement of the State, and sympathy with the 
prowess of kindred and countrymen, is the spirit which 
overturns the institutions of religion, prostrates civiliza- 
tion, lays waste continents, and establishes tyranny. It 
is the spirit, the avowed enemy to mental and moral 



12 

advancement, and which builds up military despotisms. 
It establishes the God-abhorred principle that "might 
makes right," and returns man to barbarism. In no war 
is this tendency so favored as in civil war. It has been 
well said, that there is no quarrel like that of brothers. 
Burke has said, " War suspends the rules of moral obliga- 
tion, and what is long suspended is in danger of being 
totally abrogated. Civil wars strike deepest of all into 
the manners of a people. They vitiate their politics ; 
they corrupt their morals ; they pervert even the natural 
taste of equity and justice. By teaching us to consider 
our fellow beings in a hostile light, the whole body of our 
nation becomes less dear to us. The very names of affec- 
tion and kindred, which were the bond of charity whilst 
we agreed, become new incentives to hatred and rage, 
when the communion of our countr}- is dissolved." These 
truths as to the nature and tendency of all war, and espe- 
cially of that in which our nation is involved, should be 
kept before the minds of our people, in these times, when 
we are all so ready to forget them and to foster in our 
own minds and the minds of others, the spirit of war, by 
indiscriminate acclamation of joy, based upon no recog- 
nized relation of warlike achievements to the promotion 
of truth. We are not the unthinking subjects of a des- 
potic dynasty, or blind adherents to the fortunes of a 
noble family, that we should "strain our throats" at the 
bare sight of a particular flag floating over a conquered 
field. When we shout it should be the shout of rulers, 
of those who make laws and value them. When we feel 
the voice of exultation rising in our throats, it becomes 
us as those whose shoulders bear a government, whose 
impulses and thoughts mould national character and law. 



13 

to enquire ' ' What meaneth it ? " But more specifically, 
the triumph of Americans over victories which have 
rolled back national dangers, should express, 

Secondly, The intelligent appreciation of the value of 
the government and institutions in defence of lohich they 
have been gained. 

It should mean that we understand the luorth of the 
foundation upon which civil, political, and religious lib- 
erty rests, its value to ourselves and to mankind, — that 
we have a government worthy of the greatest sacrifices of 
the nation, one esteemed above considerations of quiet, 
wealth, or blood. It ought to mean that whilst we abhor 
war and all its doings, that whilst every heart aches for 
the suifering of the wounded on the field of battle, for 
the bleeding hearts of widows and orphans all over the 
land, for the loss of the brave, " unshrouded dead," 
whose bodies lie in informal graves, but whose memories 
are placed within the inner sanctuary of the nation's 
heart, its pride and treasure ; yet that such is the na- 
tion's estimate of the main principles of their government, 
that over all this a shout of gladness may ring at every 
well-struck blow for its preservation. It should be joy in 
the hope of the preservation of an organic body of truth 
which contains a priceless legacy for our posterity ; and 
not for ours only, but for all the race. When we see our 
standard planted on the ramparts of rebellion, and trai- 
tors fleeing from its shadow, we should shout because the 
great thought it symbolizes has risen somewhat to the 
view of the skeptical yet hoping nations. Each time we 
see the starry emblem of free speech, free press, free 
labor, and free conscience, borne on high by the hands of 
masterless men, above new fields of victory, we should 
shout as though beholding the faces of the unborn millions 



14 

turned pleaclinglj upon us from the depths of the future, 
as sways in our hands the balance of their destinies. 
However lively upon such an occasion be our joy, spring- 
ing from private, social, or political sympathies, it should 
be overshadowed by that arising from the higher consid- 
erations of the intrinsic, paramount value of free principles 
to the world. It becomes every American citizen to rise 
above the sphere of irrational impulse, in which the great 
herd of mankind, obeying the nod of their masters, have 
in all ages, under such circumstances, acted, and to think, 
act, and applaud, as those in whose acts the world is 
interested. It should mean — 

Thirdly, The joy of the people in the vindication of the 

laws. 

The laws are the common property of the nation. 
Every man has a personal interest in their preservation, 
and a right to demand that they shall be honored. The 
very existence of free government, as well as the enjoy- 
ment of the benefits it is designed to confer, depends upon 
the sacredness in which the laws are held in their making 
and execution. The stability of God's moral government 
in the Universe rests upon the sanctity with which the 
moral law is held in the mind of the lawgiver. All 
observation indicates that in proportion as men entertain 
the idea that God holds but lightly the laws he has pro- 
mulgated, in that proportion does the authority of his law 
sink in their esteem. The estimate in which a ruler holds 
his laws can be known only by his faithfulness in their 
execution, and when violated and punishment fails to be 
inflicted, the logic of the subject is, " the lawgiver treats 
his laws as unworthy of execution, and why should I 
hold them worthy of obedience." And as in the moral 
government of God, his authority depends upon the views 



15 

the subject takes of God's adherence and valuation of his 
own laws ; so in human governments the authority of the 
laws rests mainly upon the estimate the people see the 
government itself places upon the laws it enacts for tbeir 
direction, manifested in the faithfulness of their execu- 
tion. This is especially true of the great mass of men 
who habitually press to the utmost verge of impunity and 
are restrained from committing outrage upon the rights of 
others mainly by the sanctions of human laws. And 
however men may reason upon the theory of our own 
government, that public officers, or in other words, the 
active power of the government, are but the agents of 
the intelligent minds of the nation, still there are no 
minds so pure, so much in unison with the spirit of law, 
but that when they look to the enactments of their own 
agents, though their laws should be dipt from the statute 
book of the One Lawgiver, they feel something of the 
restraints of law, and something of the feeling of antag- 
onism, which springs from hearts at variance in some 
degree with the spirit of the enactments, and in propor- 
tion as they do they are capable of being injured by the 
example of their own agents. Because men may enact 
laws by themselves or agents, which are just and good, it 
by no means follows that they will either properly obey 
or execute them. Men make laws with their heads, but 
obey them with their hearts. Republicans make a gov- 
ernment purporting to be the expression of their wisdom 
and justice ; the officers are elected as exponents of these, 
and their actions operate upon the people with a double 
influence, from the fact that they have chosen them as 
worthy, and they are apt to sanction and applaud what 
the government is in fact for what it ought to be. If it 
disregards the obligation and value of law, law will sink 



16 

in the minds of the people. If it holds the integrity of 
the laws as the bond of its security, executing them with 
rigorous impartiality, the law will be magnified in the 
eyes of every citizen. The importance of this cannot be 
overestimated. A free government can loose anything 
better than the sanctity of law in the popular mind. It 
is the very frame of its being. The devastations of war, 
in the destruction of commerce, the interuptions of trade 
and agriculture, the desolation of towns and cities, may 
be repaired by the well directed energies of a law-abiding 
people. The taint of treason may be removed ; but let 
the authority of law be prostrated in the mind of a nation, 
and history points to but one remedy, but one hand with 
power to raise it up again, and that the tyranfs hand. 
Lawless power is the restorer of the power of law. 
Too low already has inefficient government brought the 
authority 'of law in the minds of our people. In many 
sections, the laws which are meant to protect reputation, 
personal liberty, and even life, are mere names, whilst 
the inflamed passions of the mob are the real law. In 
our best regulated States, we pass laws which are openly 
set at defiance and trampled under foot by the mob, thus 
bringing into disrepute the name and authority of all law. 
Law should be enforced at the point of the bayonet, and 
the people would be careful for what they asked and 
legislators what they enacted, and the rights of every 
man be more secure. When a just law is defied, every 
American citizen should feel his rights invaded, and 
demand its execution in the name of his personal safety. 
No sacrifice can be too great on the part of a people to 
insure the supremacy of law. Human governments may 
well pattern by the Divine, where the dying agonies of 
the Son of Ggd, and the flames of an eternal hell, are the 



17 

everlasting testimony of the Almighty to the value of 
law. When we shout, therefore, at a victory gained over 
rebels to the government, it should mean joy that the 
authority of the laws is being vindicated. Every vic- 
tory gained in their defence deepens the foundations of 
individual happiness and national security. 

Finally, It ought to mean the reinforcement of the moral 
power of the government to a degree which will render it 
positive and renovating in its character. 

It needs all the support it can get. Not too deeply 
versed in the ethics of government, nor prone to radical- 
ism in that direction, it needs every enlightening, stimu- 
lating influence which the nation can bring to bear upon 
it. As a nation we have been atheistical. For years, 
laws of God have been set aside, and His venerated word 
made the endorser of national crimes. Moses, Paul, and 
Christ, have been employed to forge manacles for the 
slave. The highest use government has had for revela- 
tion, has been to quiet the public conscience with a per- 
verted interpretation of a book which was venerated by 
the vulgar, and therefore to be regarded. The present 
government was born in the awakening of the people, and 
truly represents the pecnliarly national condition to which 
it owes its birth. It should be awake, and nothing but 
the voice of the people can awake it. It should be 
aroused to an activity such as the stern demands of the 
times require, and nothing but the thunder of the popular 
voice can arouse it. The shout of the people should 
mean, that the institutions they venerate, and the body of 
laws they revere, shall be cleansed and renovated. It 
should express that arousing of the principle of life in 
the body which will throw off disease and its corruptions. 
It is the natural result of progress, that each succeeding 



age should be fettered by the half-enlightened doings of 
the former. Institutions and laws will always spring from 
the half-developed ideas and half-learned lessons of every 
generation, which are either entirely erroneous or insujQ&- 
cient and imperfect, which must be destroyed or corrected 
by the generation following. The mere literalist who 
clings to the dead letter of legal statement, will never 
accomplish this. He must grasp the spirit of the law, 
and execute with enlarged wisdom and expanding power 
the spirit and intent of the law, which lies half-uttered 
upon the old statute book. Thus alone can the world 
make progress, — by the repeal of the wrong, and liberal 
construction of the narrow laws. It is a respect we owe 
to the dead, as well as a duty to the living, to bring to 
maturity, in our construction of the constitution and laws, 
the well-meant, but half-developed, thoughts of our 
fathers ; and instead of being injured, law will be magni- 
fied in the minds of the people, when they behold its 
spirit ruling with positive power in the hearts of the 
rulers. It is one of our chief hindrances in the midst of 
existing difiiculties, that part of our constitution and some 
of our laws exhibit maxims and principles as half under- 
stood and half believed, which are to-day axioms in the 
minds of intelligent republicans ; or, rather, they indicate 
the modifying power of popular demands upon the action 
of a government which meant far more perfect things. 
The constitution and fundamental laws of the land con- 
template no such thing as the perpetuity of slavery ; on 
the contrary, the Fathers of the Eepublic, jealous of their 
honor in the eyes of their children, as well as jealous for 
their welfare, as they looked into the clouds of popular 
prejudice and ignorance which they were unable at once 
to dispel, and whose shadows must fall upon their doings, 



19 

saw with the eyes of their faith, in the distance, the 
realization of that glorious vision of universal liberty 
which had blessed their souls, bowing to the weight of a 
popular sentiment they could not withstand, yet venerat- 
ing the truth which must triumph in the end, did not 
write the name of slave. That time, we trust, is near at 
hand. Once more government should feel the pressure of 
popular opinion ; not to hinder its movements, but to urge 
it onward ; not to bind its steps with legal technicalities, 
but to liberate it from the bondage of the past, and com- 
pel it to action commensurate with the spirit of the law 
and the high demands of the time. In such times as 
these, every citizen should rise up to the full theory of 
democracy, and make the men they have placed in power 
their agents in fact. The government is the creature of 
the people, and when they will it must obey. It is now 
waiting their voice. Already has a message of the Presi- 
dent to Congress substantially asked the nation what it 
means to do with traitors and slavery. Now is the time 
to answer that question. Now is the day of salvation. 
Every man should feel the responsibility which God has 
placed upon him, to add his mite to that weight of popu- 
lar thought which shall make this administration the 
sword which shall cleave asunder the nation from its sins. 
The mind, thought, purpose, and moral sentiment of the 
people should flow in upon the government with a volume 
and power which should not only sustain it, but raise it to 
a position unknown in its history, and impel it to the 
performance of deeds which shall make its memory a 
blessed legacy to future generations. In this crisis, gov- 
ernment will not act beyond the expressed demand of the 
ruling part of the nation. As it prosecutes the war, a 
light is beginning to dawn upon the future. As grave 



20 

responsibilities resultant upon ultimate victory become 
strong probabilities, it is asking the people what they 
want. And now is the time they should make themselves 
heard, from mountain and valley, from one end of the 
land to the other, through every channel by which a 
nation speaks — to demand the doing of things which, if 
left now, may be left undone, to our eternal undoing. 

The chief dangers to which we will be exposed, in case 
of ultimate victory — which is now placed beyond reason- 
able doubt, although some reverses may yet be experi- 
enced, and much fighting may yet be done — are those 
which arise from victory itself. In the hour of triumph, 
if men are not cruel, they are apt to he fooHshlt/ magna?i- 
imous. Ever prone to extremes, if the hour of victory 
is not dishonored by the glutting of vengeance, its glory 
is apt to be diminished by the effeminate doings of a false 
and ostentatious magnanimity, more regardful of the light 
in which they stand in the eyes of a vanquished foe, than 
how they appear in the sight of justice and of God. As 
Ahab when he rode a conqueror, with the acclamations of 
a victorious army in his ears, when he meets the van- 
quished king, God appointed to destruction, bowing 
before him in abject submission, with a rope around his 
neck, he hails him as " brother," seats him in his chariot, 
and ratifies a treaty with him, and remembers no more 
the God who gave him the victory, or the interests of that 
kingdom and that truth in consideration of which it was 
given, and God passed the sentence, " thy life shall go 
for his life, and thy people for his people." To us in 
case of ultimate victory this danger is peculiarly immi- 
nent. Whilst it is true that the great mass of men in the 
free states are loyal to the national flag, it is not true 
that a large majority are loyal to the great principles it 



21 

means. There is not a numerical majority to-day of the 
men who uphold the present war, who have a thought 
beyond the maintenance of the mere unity of the nation. 
The great truths which lie at the root of the conflict are 
unfelt and unacknowledged. The Middle and Western 
states are still plethoric with old prejudices — Illinois is 
voting the black man from her borders. The Democracy 
of Michigan, in their recent convention, have proclaimed 
as their brightest hope, the speedy overthrow of Secession 
of Abolitionism — and this is the principle, or rather lack 
of principle, which represents hundreds of thousands from 
the Delaware to the Missouri. Millions have no higher 
thought. That they rush to the battle field by thousands, 
indicates no reinforcement of the idea striving on the side 
of freedom. Among them are thousands of brave, truth 
loving, God fearing men ; but the mass are oblivious to 
the meaning of the war. The darkness of oppression and 
the light of freedom are one to them — hating alike abo- 
litionist and rebel — -fighting for the opinions of forty 
years ago — believing it possible for Sumner and Davis to 
rush into each other's arms, apologize and be friends, 
and for right and wrong to fuse into a fugitive slave bill. 
Through all that vast section there is a ponderous mass of 
inert mind which can only be moved on emergency, by a 
determined, concentrated, mighty effort of the enlight- 
ened thought of the north. By degrees the light is 
dawning upon it. Here and there start forth from doubt- 
ful company, strong, manly defenders of the true liberty, 
who come to the w^ork with the zeal of new converts, and 
in many cases, with about as much knowledge, who need 
direction and encouragement. In Boston, Providence, 
New York and Philadelphia, are thousands of merchants 
who stand waiting for any kind of a peace, that a south- 



22 

ern market may be opened, — whose sole principle is 
money — who would be bosom friends with the most ma- 
lignant traitors in a week. Ministers are waiting to 
come north and go south to convince the respective parties 
how much in the wrong they have both been. Congress- 
men are waiting for that "good time coming," when 
again the shrewd politician may ride to power on the 
necks of Massachusetts and South Carolina ; and thus far 
at the hands of government it has been a goodly thing to 
be a rebels and a bad thing to have known sympathy with 
the unwilling hands which support rebellion. Halleck is 
in Missouri using Fremont's labor to support the action of 
the Illinois legislature in erecting a wall against the flying 
slave. Fremont, with a patient patriotism which future 
times will applaud, stands by waiting till the hand be 
taken from the throat from which issued the people's 
voice, and the voice of liberty. Butler for months has 
been suspended from the peg of delay. Now paper war 
is at a close ; blood has been shed, homes have been 
desolated, — the bereaved ask for what? Mothers, sis- 
ters, wives, brothers, fjithers ask with peculiar emphasis 
as they cover up their dead, " why have they died?" 
The voice of the free people is rising — taxation is com- 
ing — patriots in congress are asking questions solemn and 
hard, — Butler has been started off, and Fremont begins 
to be spoken of for a new command, and the President 
asks the nation what it wants. Now is the time for the 
very stones to cry out, Liberty ! Justice ! We long and 
fear for the hour of victory. If it is the weakness of the 
generous conqueror to lo^se sight of truth and justice in 
the moment of triumph, how great is our danger, when 
throughout the whole body such a mass of matter is 
gravitating to the side of wrong. 



23 

We are coming to a time when the moral power of the 
nation will be tried as it has never been, when every 
muscle will be strained, — a time in which, if we con- 
quer in this strife, questions are to be decided as grave 
as ever agitated the mind of patriot or statesman. The 
question of the rights of States, of what is the cement of 
the nation, is to be forever settled ; the question who 
are to be citizens when rebellion owns loyalty, who are to 
pay the bills, and who to be punished. Then will be the 
time of our danger ; then will the integrity of the nation 
be tried. We will have orations based upon the one 
feeling of generosity to the vanquished, and the reestab- 
lishment of fraternal sympathy. Homes desolated, towns 
burnt, beggared aristocrats, ruined States, will be strong 
arguments with which to hush the demands of justice. 
There will be property to be confiscated, traitors to be 
hung, men to be freed, law to be honored, — all under 
the sun of peace, and in the pride of conquest. Then 
will be the danger that the principles of truth, the value 
of law, and the honor of God, will be prostrated in the 
path of folly. The sentiment of retributive justice is 
rising up in the hearts of the thinking nation, and 
demands to be regarded. There is a certain trembling in 
the hearts of true men, for fear that treason will be 
treated in the property and persons of its chief supporters 
and instigators, in a manner which will make them light 
things in the minds of the people — rather as a freak of 
conscience than as a death-meriting villainy. There is 
a fear, that prejudice against the black man and sym- 
pathy with his master will outweigh the principles of 
justice upon which the safety of our nation depends ; 
that slavery will be left with its old rights, too sacred 
a thing for the touch of Liberty ; that Northern blood 



24 

and money shall be used to reconstruct a dishonored 
Union ; that such men as Davis, Toombs, Rhett, Stephens, 
Breckenridge, and Floyd, shall go unhung, if caught; 
that we may again behold the spectacle of Southern arro- 
gance domineering in the halls of Congress over Northern 
men, robbed of dignity and honor by base compromises ; 
that the action of the government will degrade law, until 
statutes are as worthless as Confederate notes ; that the 
security of property, life, reputation, and government, 
will be lessened. Such fears as these start a thrill throuah 
the healthful soul of the nation. The dangers of victory 
and peace are more to be dreaded than all the armies of 
the South. They can be met only by agitation, by rous- 
ing the moral sentiment of loyal men and pouring it in 
upon the government with united energy. Every man 
should be made to feel the value of our government, of 
law, of virtue, and to hear the voices which speak to him 
from idle factions ; from the magnificent sacrifices of the 
rich; and the hard earned, generously given mites of the 
poor ; from desolate homes, with their tears and cries ; 
from new made graves, with their bloody occupants ; from 
the scornful questions of the nations, who ask us what we 
mean ; from the providence of the eternal God which 
scathes the land, and His Word which curses the un- 
righteous nation, — all say but one thing : "Arise in this 
hour of opportunity and proclaim universal liberty and 
execute stern justice ! " Till the principle of liberty in 
the minds of the people shall be dearer than life, and 
outraged law shall rise from the ashes with a majesty that 
the trader of New Mexico and the trapper of the Yel- 
lowstone shall feel her power, and "walk softly" in 
her presence. It is not my purpose to endorse or recom- 
mend any particular scheme of emancipation or pun- 



25 

ishment, but simply to urge upon every citizen to demand 
of those in power that slaves shall be freed, and traitors 
shall he punished, in a manner which shall exalt lihtrty 
and honor law. To point out the significance which 
the triumph of hiw-making Americans should have, 
that it should mean the true honor of men and the true 
glory of God. In the midst of momentary reverses, let 
the people not forget to ply still the victor's demand. In 
the midst of the ringing of bells and the firing of cannon, 
let the solemn responsibilities of the future have conside- 
ration, — let the voice of the people ring out so clearly 
that Europe as she listens may not need to ask of our 
shout as she has asked of our doings, "what meaneth 
it ? " Let the action of the nation be such that when the 
last manacle has been knocked from the slave, when the 
last traitor has fallen, when the last act of justice shall 
be rendered, when the last shout of triumph shall go 
abroad into the ears of the race, the world shall know it 
is the voice of a people rising from her sorrows, cleansed 
from her sins, to walk in white among the nations, reflect- 
ing to mankind the smile of a reconciled God. 



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